Mariah Stewart - Cry Mercy

Maybe things hadn't gone so smoothly with Congressman Gardner after all. Maybe he should drive down to Ballard and just see for himself what was keeping her. He debated. If all was well, Emme might not appreciate him inviting himself to the party.

But if all was well, why hadn't she called?

•

Mallory sat across the desk from Robert and studied his face. In the time she'd worked for him, she'd never seen him so confounded.

“You're telling me that Emme Caldwell isn't Emme Caldwell,” he said, as if he had trouble understanding the words. “Emme isn't Emme, she's really someone named Ann Nolan?”

“Yes. That's what I'm telling you.”

“And you are absolutely, 100 percent positive of this.”

“I wouldn't have come to you if I wasn't certain, Robert.”

“But she's still a cop, right?”

“Yes, she was a police officer in California.”

“Have you spoken to her former department about this?”

“I tried to,” Mallory told him, “but the chief of police is on vacation this week and I really didn't want to discuss this with anyone else there.”

“Why would she lie about who she is?” He frowned. “And how could she get the chief of police to lie for her?”

“I've been asking myself those very questions.” “I guess you're going to have to ask her point blank,” Robert told her. “I guess we'll both have some questions for her when she gets back tonight. I want to know why she wasn't honest with us.”

“Well, as far as I'm concerned, the why is almost immaterial. She gave us a false application, Robert. The real question is, what are we going to do about it?”

Anthony Navarro leaned against the fence rail and brushed the dirt from his hands before answering his ringing phone. He'd been out for his afternoon ride on his favorite horse and had just dropped the gelding off at the stable for one of the hands to cool down. Some of his compadres fussed over him because he took off on his own every day for thirty or forty minutes, but he paid them little mind. What was the point in being who he was if he was to be locked in this house or that-he owned several-and could never leave? Besides, he knew he had little to fear. He owned everyone between here and the US border.

“Yes?” He wasn't wary of answering this most private of phones. Only those closest to him knew the number. He checked the caller ID. It was his brother, Jesus.

“We got a call that you might be interested in,” his brother said. “We have a tip on the girl.”

“We've had a lot of tips. She's in Detroit. She's in Florida. She's gone to Canada. Last week she was seen on a beach in Costa Rica. So where is she this week?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Of course she is. If I'm going to run with the daughter of a dangerous man, I'd run to Pennsylvania, too.”

“Seriously, Anthony. One of our friends was contacted by a cop from Silver Hill.”

“The department Nolan worked for?”

“Yeah. He says she's changed her name and she's working for this Mercy place.”

“What is that?”

“It's some like, company, that finds missing persons for free.”

“They work for free?”

“Yeah. This rich dude, Robert Magellan, runs it.”

“Robert Magellan?” That was a name Navarro knew. “Rich dude, for sure. This cop says Nolan is working for him?”

“Yeah. He said he intercepted a phone call about it.”

“Magellan is like, one of the richest dudes in the country.” Navarro began to walk to the house. “He probably has mad security.”

“At his workplace and his house, sure. But she has to live someplace else, right? And kids are kids. She has to play sometime, has to go to school somewhere.”

Navarro went through his front door and directly to his office and sat at his desk.

“What's the name of this place again?” he asked.

“Mercy Street Foundation.”

“Give me a minute.” He typed in the name and waited for the website to pull up.

“Here we go. Let's see what they have here. Staff bios… Robert Magellan… Susanna Jones… Mallory Russo…” Navarro laughed. “He's even got a priest on his staff. Is that for real?” He clicked on the icon for Father Kevin Burch. “Pastor, Our Lady of Angels… there's a picture of the church.”

He went back to the staff page.

“Interesting. Only one member of the staff doesn't have a picture on line. Emme Caldwell.”

“That's her. That's Nolan.”

“You're sure of this.”

“This cop that called, Whittaker, says it's her.”

“What do we know about him? Whittaker?”

“He's helped us out from time to time,” Jesus told him. “What do you want me to do, Anthony?”

“Nothing, bro. I'll take care of this myself. Thanks.”

He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. His first instinct was to send a squadron of thugs to Conroy, Pennsylvania, grab his daughter and this woman, Ann, Emme, whatever she was calling herself. But that would be stupid. Anthony Navarro was a lot of things. Stupid wasn't one of them.

He got up and walked to the window, thinking it through. The woman didn't matter. As much as he'd love to punish her for taking his only child and trying to hide her away-make this Ann Nolan regret the day she was born-he didn't have to take her to hurt her. He would simply leave her to live in the hell of knowing that the girl was gone and was going to stay gone, that she'd never see her again.

He turned his attention back to the website and read, then reread every page until inspiration struck. When it did, he found himself grinning from ear to ear, overwhelmed by his own brilliance.

He was pretty sure he knew where to find his child, and who to send to bring her to him.

All Emme knew when she opened her eyes was that it was much later in the afternoon than it had been, and she had one bitch of a headache. She could hear voices from somewhere close by but her head hadn't cleared quite enough to figure out what was being said or by whom. She lay awkwardly on the ground and hoped the fog would begin to clear soon. She tried to move but her wrists were taped behind her and her ankles were taped together. There was tape across her mouth, which forced her to breath through her nose.

It took several moments for it to dawn on her where she was, and why she'd gone there. She remembered the conversation with Ava on the phone, the drive to Ballard. She'd parked the car next to a black Mercedes sedan, reached for her phone to call Nick, and from there things began to get fuzzy. She'd gotten out of the car, hadn't she? A young woman had been walking toward her, a smile on her face.

“I'm Ava,” she'd said, her hand stretched out to Emme.

Had there been a sound behind her, something she'd not been able to place? A smack to the back of the head-that she was certain of. Something hard that had driven her to her knees, and had flooded her mind with darkness.

The voices came closer, and she tried to focus her eyes on the approaching figures. The young woman, Ava-yes, the same one who'd earlier greeted her. Funny, Emme thought, one would think she'd be upset that Emme had been knocked cold and still lay upon the ground. Shouldn't she have called for the police or for an ambulance?

Apparently not.

And the young man with her… he was familiar in a way, yet Emme was certain she'd never seen him before. It took several moments for her to place him. He bore a strong resemblance to the twins, Will and Wayne, in the photo Ali had sent her, and he matched the description of the boy who'd followed Belle in the museum. Tall, blond, buff. But who was he, and why was he here?

“… done with it now. I got her here for you. You do whatever it is you're going to do, but I don't want to know about it. I am out of here as of right now,” the girl was saying.